I have 2ds - 9yo and 6yo. My 9yo is the quietest, most polite, shy, studious little boy you could ever imagine. My 6yo is loud, incredibly confident and a bit of a handful (although hilarious and lovely). Since pretty much the beginning of this school year ds2 has started hating school. He keeps pretending to be ill so he doesn’t have to go, at school he will say he has a headache/ stomach ache and can’t go out into the playground at lunchtime. I’ve spoken to his teacher who says he is happy at school and during break/ lunch he happily plays with his friends. He has occasionally been in trouble for hitting/ pushing other boys at break times but teacher has said it wasn’t done maliciously and he just got overexcited.
I’ve asked him if anyone is being nasty to him, he says they’re not. He still gets plenty of party invitations but when I’ve seen him at parties he’s been playing happily with his group of friends and occasionally another boy will take charge and quite clearly deliberately try to exclude Ds, calling him a baby and trying to get the other boys to as well. When I’m there at parties I can intervene and once this boy knows I’m watching he stops and goes back to playing nicely.
Since Covid the school would only allow one class in the playground at a time but since new year the whole school is out again. Ds1 has now come home multiple times really upset at how horrible some of the other boys are being to ds2. Ds1 has even confronted the boys a few times which, considering he had selective mutism for the first 3 years of school is incredible. Ds1 has told the lunch monitor once but since then ds2 has begged him not to and so ds1 just comes and tells me. The nastiness is them chasing ds2 round and round the playground and saying they’re playing Tag, pushing him when they get him and then pretending they’re not playing anymore when he’s the chaser. Trying to pick him up and rock him and saying he’s a little baby who needs cuddles and a dummy. Getting him to say certain words that he mispronounces and then shouting that he can’t talk yet because he’s a baby. Telling him they’ve put a slug in his drink and that if he drinks it he’ll choke. All these are things that ds1 has reported back to me. Ds1 really wouldn’t make this stuff up, him and ds2 are normally at each other’s throats and I’ve never known him be protective before. When I tried to talk to ds2 about these things he was trying really hard not to cry but said they were just games and that they were his friends.
Last week I spoke to his teacher about it and told her ds1 had told me. She used to teach ds1 back in the days when he didn’t speak so she knows he’s not one to lie or exaggerate. I told her who it was and she said she’d keep a close eye but that from what she could see they were all really close friends. Yesterday at drop off she said she’d watched them at break times and there really didn’t seem to be any nastiness. Ds2 was smiling and laughing while playing with them and that he came in happily with them afterwards. Ds1 is adamant that they are not being nice to him though and ds2 is still really upset about having to go to school and go out at lunchtimes.
What should I do next, if anything? The hard thing is ds2 probably does smile and stuff when it’s happening because he doesn’t want to show that he’s upset. But they really do seem to me like they’re being nasty. Should I just brush it off as kids going through a normal phase? I hate seeing ds2 so sad about it as he used to be such a happy, noisy little thing.